Remembering Adrienne Shelly

Adrienne Shelly began her career in 1989’s The Unbelievable Truth. She went on to star in numerous other films, as well as over two dozen off-Broadway plays. She moved towards behind the scenes, working as a writer and a director, but she still stayed in front of the camera as well. On November 1^st 2006, she was murdered in her office by an illegal immigrant doing construction in her apartment building. This was just a few short weeks before Waitress, her final film, was accepted into Sundance. Soon after, her husband, Andy Ostroy, started the Adrienne Shelly Foundation to honor her and to help struggling female filmmakers to foster their visions and find an audience.

Last Monday, the Adrienne Shelly Foundation 2^nd Annual Fundraising Gala was held at NYU. Paul Rudd, Jeremy Sisto, Cheryl Hines and Keri Russell were some of the stars who showed up to support the foundation and perform for the crowd. Tickets were available to the general public at various prices, with the money raised going towards the foundation.

The evening began with a video reel showing clips from various project Adrienne worked on through the years. It even showed a video of her singing on a home video from what looks like a school play at Jericho High School. Once the video ended and was met by a round of applause, Andy Ostroy came out with his and Adrienne’s adorable daughter, Sophie. He told us a little about the foundation and how Adrienne would have liked to make the evening as little about her as possible because that’s the way she was. He introduced Paul Rudd who came out and did an absolutely hilarious bit. He taught us all the meaning of Independence, by reading us multiple definitions of the word and giving us an example for ach usage. For years I have been a huge fan of Paul Rudd and I have said before that he could read from a dictionary and I would find it funny. Well, he proved my theory correct.

Rudd then introduced a video, which showed clips from last year’s grant recipients films and some interviews with them. The recipients then came on to the stage. Cynthia Wade, who won an Academy Award for her documentary short funded by the Adrienne Shelly Foundation, gave a short speech on behalf of herself and the other recipients. Michael Cerveris then came out to perform the song “Baby Don’t You Cry (The Pie Song)†, which is from Waitress.

After the beautiful song played and received a rousing applause, a reading of the O Letters was performed by Keri Russell, Lilly Taylor, Cheryl Hines, Maria Tucci, Ally Sheedy and Karen Black. The O Letters, is a short satire written by Adrienne Shelly about 5 love letters uncovered in the year 4046 and read at a women’s conference. Each letter read at the Cognitive Center For Women’s Emotional Health is addressed to Stedman and signed only with an O. The hilarious letters are meant to be fictional correspondences between Oprah and Stedman Graham. Some of the funniest moments come when O continuously brings up her studio audience and complains about why Stedman won’t commit.

Following the reading, a mockumentary was shown that honored the biggest individual donor to the Adrienne Shelly Foundation. If you don’t know Brian Darcy, you should really do some research on him. According to the video, he delivered John Slatterly’s baby, de-boned himself to be a guest skeleton on Bones, and was Marie Louise Parker’s first. He was also Keri Russell’s. And Paul Rudd’s. He was also a great inspiration to Seth Rogen, John Hamm, Bill Hader and Fred Armisen. Following the video was Jeremy Sisto who introduced singer Dana Parish, who performed two songs off her new album, Uncrushed.

The evening lasted almost 2 hours and was a lot of fun. Everyone on stage seemed to enjoy themselves and you could tell they all really loved Adrienne and are proud of this foundation. If you would like to make a donation to the Adrienne Shelly Foundation or find out more about it, please go to www.AdrienneShellyFoundation.com.

Prior to the actual performance, I was waiting out in the press area to speak with some of the stars. The following is a video of what some of them had to say about Adrienne and the Foundation. You may notice that a lot of the footage is of the celebrities speaking to other media outlets. That’s because I am still very new at this and the whole Red carpet is definitely not my thing. Thank God this was a very well run media event or I would probably have no decent footage to show you right now. Since most of the other outlets were just recording audio for news stories, they were mostly fine with me joining them. In fact, some of them recorded audio of my interviews, as well. Enjoy!

Remembering Adrienne Shelly
  

Now I tried to keep my coverage of this event as unbiased as possible but now it’s time for me to geek out. The highlight of my evening was getting to meet Paul Rudd. As I said above, he has been one of my favorite actors for years. When I posted my Jason Ritter interview, I said that meeting him has put him high up on my list of actors I’d love to work with. Well, before I met Paul Rudd, he was already honing in on the top of my list. Below is a video of my interview with him, as well as some great footage of him talking with other media outlets. He was a lot of fun and really is a great guy. I hope to get the chance to interview him again someday. Enjoy!

Paul Rudd is a Role Model

Jerry Cavallaro -Â  www.AreYouStuckLikeChuck.com